Wow.
From the quiet bravery of little Karla Ortiz to Michelle Obama's show-stealer, from the moving personal insight of Anastasia Somoza to Bernie Sanders' grounded but inspirational close, night one of the 2016 Democratic National Convention was one for the books. It made me proud not just to be a Democrat, but to be an American, as well.
It didn't just make the anemic, ugly Republican National Convention look like garbage, or even the dumpster fire that Trump is so often equated with. It made it look like a garbage truck engulfed in flames, then exploding as it careens off a cliff and into sea of raw sewage. (Except that would probably have an audience.) It helps, you see, that Democrats actually like their candidate.
Well, most do.
A group of Sanders supporters seems to have attended for the sole purpose of making it clear they do not. And there is a time for that: during the actual vote, held today. That is the point of having a convention, after all.
The time to express that was not during Elijah Cummings' moving speech about his sharecropper parents, which they drowned out. It was not during Elizabeth Warren's speech about the values of the Democratic Party, during which they targeted her personally. It wasn't during Cory Booker's rousing barn-burner. And it sure as Hell wasn't during Sarah Silverman's appearance, because a comic of her talent and experience knows how to handle a heckler.
And that's all they are: hecklers.
Protesters, you see, are often important voices and should (within reason) be welcome. They come to call attention to an issue. For example, when protesters shouted, "Black lives matter!" during Booker's speech, that was an opportunity to engage on an important issue. I must assume this was a different group of people, however, since the "Bernie or bust" hecklers had drowned out Cummings' declaration of those very words earlier in the day.
Hecklers, on the other hand, are there to call attention to themselves. That's pretty clearly what happened yesterday at the DNC. At no point during the proceedings did these people contribute to the discourse in any meaningful way. Rather, it was as if the comments section briefly became real life, instead of that thing people with real lives ignore. "Look at me! I exist, too!" Was the main takeaway.
Which makes sense, given that they don't have an issue. They think they do, sure. But losing an election is not an especially compelling cause for protest, particularly when Sanders' team has made it quite clear that they lost fair, square and by a relatively large margin. All of the click-bait headlines and Russian hacks in the world won't make that untrue. Bernie Sanders has conceded, endorsed his former opponent and begged his supporters not to disrupt the convention.
One member of the Iowa delegation, eager to shed the spoiled brat image currently enjoyed by the Bernie or bust crowd, told a reporter that, "Bernie basically fed us a bunch of Mountain Dew and now he wants us to go to bed. It's not going to happen." But the general consensus is that most of the hecklers are part of the delegation from California (which, ironically, Bernie Sanders lost by over 350,000 votes.)
As a Californian, that embarrasses me. As the candidate they're backing, that embarrasses Bernie Sanders. And all Democrats should be embarrassed that an eleven-year-old girl standing on national television to plead on behalf of her mother should have to face a group of asinine, entitled bullies, as well.
There have to be rules of conduct that prohibit this sort of behavior.
Whoever they are and wherever they're from, they need to be found, politely escorted from the building and stripped of the right to re-enter. Let them vote. Let their voices be heard in the way that truly matters. Then get them (gently) the Hell out.